{"id":176657,"date":"2020-04-23T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/04\/23\/its-the-little-things\/"},"modified":"2020-04-23T19:06:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T00:06:00","slug":"its-the-little-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/04\/23\/its-the-little-things\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s the Little Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I would not have thought that <a href=\"https:\/\/aviationweek.com\/defense-space\/aircraft-propulsion\/week-defense-april-23-30-2020\">a minor change to KC-135 wiper blades can improve fuel efficiency by over 1%<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The U.S. Air Force has discovered that vertically mounted wiper blades on the KC-135 Stratotanker reduce aircraft drag by about 1% during cruise conditions, potentially saving the service $7 million annually in fuel costs.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The wiper blades on the Boeing KC-135 traditionally are positioned horizontally on the windshield as part of the original 1950s-era design. As aviation aerodynamics research later indicated, placing wipers vertically when not in use could improve aerodynamic efficiency.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The team used a KC-135 from Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Ohio for comprehensive airframe ground testing. A computational fluid dynamics model revealed a reduction in drag of 0.8% for repositioning the blade vertically and 0.2% for a slimmer wiper design. After collecting sufficient data, the team is ready to begin airworthiness testing and certify the updated design with the FAA.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>First, I find this intensely amusing, and second, why did it take until 75 years into the jet age to discover this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I would not have thought that a minor change to KC-135 wiper blades can improve fuel efficiency by over 1%: The U.S. Air Force has discovered that vertically mounted wiper blades on the KC-135 Stratotanker reduce aircraft drag by about 1% during cruise conditions, potentially saving the service $7 million annually in fuel costs. The &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[384,427,382],"class_list":["post-176657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-science","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}